Dena Al-Adeeb is an artist/scholar born in Baghdad, Iraq. Forced out of Iraq just before the Iraq/Iran War in 1980, she and her family escaped to Kuwait until the beginning of the 1991 Gulf War, when she was forced to relocate to San Francisco, California. Dena left the US in 2003 where she spent time in several places before moving to Egypt for four years. She returned to the US in 2008 and is currently pursing a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Culture and Representation Track at New York University. She received her M.A. in Anthropology-Sociology, Visual and Cultural Anthropology at the American University in Cairo. She received her B.A. in International Relations, Middle East and North Africa from San Francisco State University. As a cultural worker, educator and political grassroots activist, she co-founded and worked in numerous organizations, institutions and grassroots-teaching collectives in the Bay Area and nationally in the US.

She works in a variety of media including installation, performance, painting, sculpting, video, photography, sound, and writing. Dena worked in the multi-media and e-learning industry as a graphic designer, illustrator, editor and publisher for several years before teaching at Expression College for Digital Arts. Her work explores the mappings of imagined and real memories, architecture objects and cityscapes. She spins narratives, legends and myths into installations, paintings and sculptures, while her photography and video work captures the intricacies of human imaginations and rituals.

Her work has been presented in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Michigan, Sweden, Cairo, Dubai, Tunisia and at the Orebro International Videoart Festival, Falaki Gallery, Mashrabia Gallery, Karim Francis Gallery, Bastakiya Art Fair, Galerie le Violon Bleu, Pro-Arts Gallery, the Arab American National Museum, among others. Her work has been published in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, The Color of Violence Anthology, Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging, among others.